At last the Symbian phaseout is almost complete. Only 2.2 million Symbian handsets were sold in the quarter. The rest of smartphone sales (9.6 million units) consisted of Asha full touch phones. Asha is a popular low-cost option in developing markets and uses its own proprietary bare-bones operating smartphone operating system.

Nokia Lumia 920

While smartphone sales are down almost 20 percent from the 19.6 million units Nokia moved last year, the drop off was less severe than analysts were expecting. And the fact that roughly two-thirds of Nokia high-end smartphones are now Windows Phone indicates that the transition is almost finished.

As a result of the cost cutting coupled with stronger sales, Nokia says it has achieved underlying profitability again. That's a huge development for the OEM who endured severalpainful quartersof large losses. Nokia estimates it pocketed €30M ($39.8M USD) in non-recurring IPR income on total sales of €3.9B ($5.2B USD).

Overall Nokia sales of all mobile devices fell to 79.6 million units -- from a volume of 113 million units last year. Nokia recently lost its global lead in handset (including non-smartphone sales) to South Korea's Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930).

Nokia stock jumped up over 20 percent in early trading on the hopeful news.

Gartner, Inc. (IT), a top mobile research firm, has estimated that by 2015 that Windows Phone will be the #2 smartphone platform in the world, bumping Apple and its increasingly-dated Palm-style user interface to third place.

"So, I think the same thing of the music industry. They can't say that they're losing money, you know what I'm saying. They just probably don't have the same surplus that they had." -- Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA